from research, talent cultivation, discipline construction, to public services. Only in
this way could the evaluation scientifically unravel the production efficiency of the
211Us and the“211 Project”real impact on Chinese higher education development.
Currently, there is no such evaluation on the research productivity changes of
211Us.^2 This book systematically illustrates the research input and output status of
211Us in the third term of “211 Project” (2006–2010), and comprehensively
employs DEA and Malmquist Index to assess the research production efficiency and
productivity changes of 211Us. Based on the econometric models to explore the
key factors affecting research production efficiency, we make some policy sug-
gestions for improving research productivity of 211Us.
1.2 Research Contribution..................................
211Us are the major base for Chinese scientific research. Being launched from
1995, tremendous amount of funds had been invested into research activities in
211Us. These funds focused on supporting excellent research team, construction of
disciplines and research platforms, contributed to the smooth development of
research activities in 211Us, and helped them to establish their research advantages
and specialties, and inspired the universities to devote to research activities, and
also helped to form an interactive mechanism between universities, central and
local governments. Nevertheless, there lacked quantitative assessment on 211Us’
research efficiency from the perspective of input and output, which is not conducive
to the full play of the efficiency and effectiveness of government funds. Thus, it’s
extremely important and urgent for researchers to correctly assess the research
production efficiency of 211Us.
This book will evaluate the research performance of 211Us from the perspective
of output, efficiency and change of productivity, aimed to provide evidence for the
project managers to make betterfinancial allocation decisions; to provide references
for administrators of 211Us to improve research efficiency and productivity. In
short, this research has important value of reference for the government, the project
management and 211Us. At the same time, this research will construct feasible
indicator system to evaluate university research efficiency, and provide a theoretical
basis for dynamic evaluation on research efficiency and productivity, and offer
some useful quantitative methods and approaches for the follow-up studies.
(^2) To date, most Chinese studies were limited to the sample of universities administered by MOE,
and their data was usually cross-sectional. See Chap. 2 for a thorough literature review.
1.1 Research Background 5